RUSH: Now, as to this business, it’s the second day in a row that he has said he’s going to have this guy with the bad wig, what’s this guy’s name, Orszag. Drudge has a picture of this guy, the OMB guy, Peter Orszag. I’ve heard the name. I hadn’t seen a picture of this guy in a long time.
REICH: Well, I’ve been hearing about it for, let’s see, about 50 years, it never really happens all that much, Andrea. I can tell you in 1993 I was there sitting with Bill Clinton and Algore and his economic team, and we did literally go through step by step, line by line almost every budgetary item and we got rid of a lot of stuff that shouldn’t have been there. But did it make a huge difference? The answer is no.
RUSH: What a crock! What a crock! Folks, there is no such thing as getting rid of anything in Washington. We’ve been through this, baseline budgeting. A cut is nothing more than something that’s not growing as fast as was originally forecast. Have you ever seen the budget get smaller? Have you ever seen the budget deficit, what it’s projected to be next year, $1.3 trillion. Here’s Bob Reich, ‘I’ve been hearing about it for 50 years and it never really happens that much.’ And yet this is a guy that was part of a campaign team that kept talking about Draconian cuts, the worst economy in the last 50 years. He’s part of a party whenever a Republican president submits a budget, why, too many cuts, Draconian cuts, poor and minorities hardest hit. You can’t take that much money away from this.
There are never any cuts. And these guys went through the budget line by line and got rid of some things? I’d like to know how they did that, because there is no line-item veto. I mean these guys just flapping their gums out there making it sound like Obama’s got a magic wand and he, too, can do it. Then Reich throws cold water on the whole thing, yeah, we did it, we got rid of a lot of stuff that shouldn’t be there, didn’t make any difference, didn’t make any difference. This was also discussed on the Fox News All Stars last night on the Fox News Channel, Special Report with Brit Hume. He was speaking with Fred Barnes, and Hume said, ‘In Washington, a cut means something that doesn’t grow, and in Washington anything that doesn’t grow as fast as it was previously scheduled is called a cut. What do you make of all this line by line budget stuff they’re going to do?’
BARNES: When I was hearing that from Barack Obama, I just rolled my eyes. Remember zero-based budgeting that Jimmy Carter brought? Remember the Grace Commission under Ronald Reagan? And now this poor Peter guy is going to have to go through page by page, line by line. It really is preposterous. I mean, look, on the one hand, Ed, I think you pointed out, Barack Obama is proposing one of the great spending binges of all time, and then we’re going to attack the structural deficit. I mean, come on. It’s silly.
RUSH: It is silly. Forget Obama’s binge spending. What the hell have we been doing the past six weeks with these bailouts? I saw a number today that we’re now up over eight trillion. It’s hard to know what the number is, in bailout money. Eight trillion! What Obama is going to spend is inconsequential to this, even though it’s huge. His spending, however, is going to be directly related to government growth. Now, remember the example that Obama used yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, was the farm bill and all these crop subsidies and people that make way too much money getting paid by the government not to do so. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting editorial on this today.
‘Barack Obama yesterday introduced his new White House budget director, Peter Orszag, vowing to conduct a ‘line by line’ review of the federal fisc. Most incoming chief executives promise that sort of thing. But here’s a detail that really caught our eye: As part of his plan to kill government programs ‘that have outlived their usefulness,’ the President-elect singled out farm subsidies for the rich. If he really means it, this would be big news. Mr. Obama cited a recent Government Accountability Office report that found that of the 1.8 million people receiving farm payments from 2003 to 2006, nearly 3,000 had incomes above $2.5 million, which ought to make them ineligible for aid. Nevertheless, they cashed in to the tune of some $49 million. Having written 40,000 or so editorials against this corporate welfare over the years, we’d love to see a Democrat join the fight.
‘However, there is the small matter of where Senator Obama was on this issue when we really needed him. The 2008 farm bill — which set national policy for five years — was a perfect chance for real change thanks to surging crop prices, record farm income and a President unconcerned about re-election. President Bush actually sought a $200,000 annual income cap on subsidy payments, but Congress couldn’t bring itself to vote on anything below $750,000. And even that got killed by the likes of Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad, who as it happens helped Mr. Orszag get his current job running the Congressional Budget Office. The Members ended up passing a $300 billion bill in which nearly every crop, from corn to sugar, won subsidy increases. Mr. Bush vetoed it in May but was overridden.
‘The vote in the Senate was 82 to 13. Mr. Obama missed the roll call, issuing a campaign statement saying that the bill was ‘far from perfect’ and would have preferred ‘tighter payment limits.’ However, he added that ‘with so much at stake, we cannot make the perfect the enemy of the good.’ And he then went on to rake Mr. Bush and John McCain (who opposed the bill) for ‘saying no to America’s farmers and ranchers, no to energy independence, no to the environment, and no to millions of hungry people.’ In other words, given the chance to support cuts in farm subsidies for the rich, Mr. Obama chose instead to attack his Republican opponents for doing precisely that.’
So his record suggests that times are too crucial now to be hard on the farmers, any of them. Now he wants to portray himself as a giant budget cutter. It’s all smoke and mirrors; cuz I’m telling you, folks, there aren’t going to be any budget cuts in our country for the rest of the time you and I are alive. The bailout has just seen to it. (interruption) What are you freaking out over there for, Snerdley? You think I’m wrong about this? How in the world can we get budget cuts, Snerdley, when we’re now spending over $8 trillion on a bailout? Where are we gonna get the budget cuts? I’m telling you that the federal budget is not gonna get smaller. (interruption) When has it? He may find a couple things in there, you know, subsidies. If there’s something that benefits Republicans in the private sector, he’ll try to get it out, but it’s going to be replaced by something else. There aren’t going to be any budget cuts. I mean, show me where the impetus for it is even now.
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RUSH: My last comment that the budget’s not going to get cut for as long as the rest of us live, my friends, I’m not saying there’s not stuff in there to cut. There’s so much to cut outta there. You could probably cut billions, if not hundreds of billions, out of this budget. I’m not saying that there’s not fat and waste and all this stuff in there; I’m just telling you that where’s the impetus to do it? We’ve been here before. This is the Clinton administration redone, except we’ve got a guy who’s now admitting he has no executive experience. He’s admitting that Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than he is. Anyway, it’s a side issue. What he’s doing is he’s promising this $700 billion in new spending and then saying he’s going to cut spending at the same time. This to give the impression that this massive new spending is going to be offset by his cuts, and there are not going to be cuts. It isn’t going to happen.
The Democrats have controlled Congress for two years, including Obama as one of its Democrat members, what have they even attempted to cut from anywhere in the federal budget of any consequence? These were essentially Democrat budgets that Bush signed. I’m not trying to depress anybody here. It’s time for a little dose of reality. ‘But, Rush! But, Rush! If the Republicans would run on cutting the budget…’ Yeah, yeah, but except this time they’d have to do it because they ran on it a bunch of times then they got saddled with a big spending president and they couldn’t. It can be done. I’m just saying the atmospherics and the opportunity for it will probably present themselves sooner than I think, because this is untenable what we’re doing here. From standpoint of common sense finance, this is untenable.
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RUSH: This is Roy in Summerfield, North Carolina. Hi, Roy, great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, mega-grazie for taking a call from an Obama supporter.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Wow, and mega condolences on the last few months. Couldn’t get Hillary on the head of the ticket, Democratic ticket. Couldn’t get her on the tail and then Obama got elected. Looks like we might have 60 Democratic senators coming up here.
RUSH: Yeah, but, you know, I’ll tell you what. We got the Clinton cabinet, and if it hadn’t been for me supporting Mrs. Clinton, I don’t know that we would have this many Clinton people around. But I don’t look at these things as personal failures. You don’t need to offer me condolences. I’m sitting here happy as a clam here waiting for the future.
CALLER: Yeah. I think they’re really going to do something good here. He’s shown a willingness to… Hey, he’s got a certain humility. I think Biden does, too.
RUSH: (laughing) You know, I would love to be you for a day just to find out what it’s like. I just would.
CALLER: What do you mean by that?
RUSH: To live a lie. To live a lie, to believe the lie. To be so ignorant and be in such bliss, to be so happy about an utter disaster that is about to swallow you and everybody in your neighborhood.
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RUSH: Obama and humility. That’s what did it. The two do not go together. But if there are more of you Obama voters out there and you want to call and gloat or whatever, give us a call, it’s Open Line Friday on Wednesday, 800-282-2882.